Folks who believe everything are fools. Society needs fewer fools, so making fools take a huge hit for being foolish is a good thing for society Not at all. We

Folks who believe everything are fools. Society needs fewer fools, so making fools take a huge hit for being foolish is a good thing for society Not at all. We bailed out the financial industry because we like having a functioning financial industry. Moreover, said bailout was profitable. (Then there are the folks who argue that the bailout was unnecessary.) I am interested to hear how you reconcile those two points of views, society needs fewer "fools", but yet the financial collapse is a case study in foolish exuberance. Do you draw a distinction between the individual and the institution or is foolishness excusable when we may have to take a hit for it. Even if we did not participate. In my view, the repercussions of the foolish actions on the part of the financial industry where not allowed to happen, even if it would have been painful for us. One could argue that we need to be empathetic and learn from their mistakes and that we needed to bail them out for the greater good. If that is the case, why does it differ for the individual "fool"? because we don't have to share in repercussion so we can therefore be selectively empathetic. You see from my vantage point, the "fools" that did not do their homework on wall street are no different than the "fool" that did not do his homework before getting into student loan debt or mortgage debt. You can weigh in on either side of the morality issue that we need to help them or not help them, but they both acted foolishly and other fools in the system helped perpetuate their foolishness, we have a systemic issue of anti-intellectualism and intellectual laziness. Whether you are for or against helping or are in favor of selectively helping the ones that will cause us pain for their foolishness, if we don't act, the fact remains that both sides are culpable. I know that you don't see that vantage point which is fine, but I am genuinely interested in understanding how you unify the two positions for different classes of fools, which from my vantage point looks like an argument for situational ethics. Which is what many in the financial industry used to justify their behavior.